Monthly Archive:: April 2009

2012: The End of the Internet

weildish 2009-04-30 Humor 43 Comments

According to research that's supposed to be published later this year, growing demand for Internet use will soon outstrip the stamina of the infrastructure supporting it, and the Internet will cease to be reliable by 2012. Complete anarchy will ensue, and the world will essentially end along with the Internet we created for it. Perhaps this is what the Mayan prophecies meant?

Rumour: Apple To Start Competing on Price

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-30 Apple 70 Comments

While we generally don't really report on Apple rumours (for obvious reasons) I thought the one currently making its rounds across the countless copying/pasting Apple websites is pretty interesting discussion material. According to the ominpresent and omnipotent "people familiar with the matter", as told by AppleInsider, Apple is preparing to compete on... Price.

Solaris 10 5/09 Released

Submitted by poundsmack 2009-04-30 Solaris 11 Comments

Sun is rolling out the latest update to Solaris 10 with enhancements to Solaris Containers, tighter integration with IPSec and upgrades to its Logical Domains technology. The updated Solaris also includes the work Sun and Intel have done over the past two years to optimize the operating system to take advantage of the power, management and monitoring capabilities in Intel's new Xeon 5500 series processors, code-named Nehalem. The seventh update to Solaris 10 comes a year before the planned release of the next-generation Sun OS.

OpenBSD 4.5 Released

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-30 OpenBSD 23 Comments

The OpenBSD team has released OpenBSD 4.5. There have been lots of changes and bug fixes, but it's a rather daunting list that doesn't really lend itself towards a summary (hint), but I guess if you use OpenBSD you are perfectly capable of figuring this out yourself. You can get the new release from the download page.

Icaros Desktop 1.1.1 Released

Submitted by Amigaman 2009-04-30 Amiga & AROS 5 Comments

Icaros Desktop 1.1.1 has been released. Icaros Desktop is a distribution of the AROS operating system. "This newer version provides the latest system files, including the newer ata.device from Neil Cafferkey, which fixes many incompatibility issues and should help people who couldn't try AROS before, to boot it on their computers. This new releases includes also an improved version of the OWB browser and fixes some system issues encountered with the 1.1 release. For this reason, this update is available in two versions: an update CD for Icaros Desktop 1.1 users and a complete full live! DVD for new users."

Second Palm webOS Phone Rumoured

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-30 Wireless 5 Comments

The Palm Pre and its webOS aren't even out yet, and there's already news of another Palm device that will ship in the second half of the year, also running the webOS. First it was just a rumour, but now we have pictures and hardware specifications - and now it's still just a rumour, but with pretty pictures and a spec list. Sadly, there's still no word on exactly when the Pre will arrive, but some evidence points towards June 7 - the day before Apple's WWDC starts.

Review: Canon EOS 5D mkII

Guest post by Nicholas Blachford 2009-04-30 Multimedia, AV 19 Comments

I moved into the realm of digital SLR photography back in 2003 when when I got myself a Canon 10D. The 10D served me very well for 7 years and 14 000 pictures. Then I decided it was time for an upgrade so, I got myself a full frame 21 Megapixel monster, the EOS 5D MkII. It's quite an upgrade, it even does video. These are my impressions after having it for a few weeks.

Windows 7 RC Released to TechNet, MSDN Subscribers

Submitted by REM2000 2009-04-30 Windows 29 Comments

As announced, the Windows 7 release candidate is now available for TechNet and MSDN subscribers. "The RC milestone is a result of feedback from millions of customers and partners around the world. It indicates the operating system is entering the final phases of development and is ready for partners to develop new applications, device drivers and services, and ready for IT pros to evaluate Windows 7 and examine how it will operate in their environment." The public release will be May 5.

DragonFlyBSD 2.2.1 Released

Submitted by Budman 2009-04-30 BSD & Darwin 3 Comments

DragonFlyBSD 2.2.1 has been released. It's an intermediary release with no important new features, but it does have a number of bugfixes. Get it from the download page.

NetBSD 5.0 Released, Brings Major SMP Improvements

Submitted by haad 2009-04-30 NetBSD 23 Comments

The guys and girls behind the NetBSD project have released version 5.0 of their BSD operating system. NetBSD is a highly-portable operating system, the second open-source BSD implementation (after 386BSD). Naturally, version 5.0 comes packed with a whole boatload of improvements.

XPM Designed for Small-Businesses, Not Us Geeks

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-29 Windows 24 Comments

When the news got out that Windows 7 would get a "Classic"-like virtual environment for running Windows XP applications that would otherwise not run on Windows 7, we hoped it would mark the beginning of Microsoft moving backwards compatibility into a VM. This would then allow them to cut major cruft out of the operating system. However, with more and more information trickling out about Windows XP Mode, it becomes more and more clear this new feature has little to do with cutting backwards compatibility (as I already said when we covered this subject during our latest podcast). Update: Paul Thurrot states you can install other operating systems into Windows XP Mode's virtual machine as well. This is a great selling point for us enthusiasts.

Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Released

Submitted by Anne 2009-04-29 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 22 Comments

Mandriva has announced the launch of the final version of Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring (codename Pauillac). This new version comes with a host of improvements and changes, as always. Fun fact: this is the first release reported to us by Anne Nicolas instead of Adam Williamson. For those that keep score.

Acer Lowers Netbooks Sales Expectations

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-29 Hardware 1 Comment

Acer has stated that it has lowered its expectations for netbook sales for this year. Instead of selling between 12-15 million netbooks, the company now believes it will ship 10-12 million netbooks.

Time Warner Plans to Spin Off AOL

Submitted by Adurbe 2009-04-29 In the News 13 Comments

US media giant Time Warner has said it anticipates spinning off one or more parts of AOL as advertising sales decline at the internet business. The announcement came after Time Warner posted stronger-than-expected profits and reaffirmed its full-year forecast. Net profits for the first quarter came in at USD 661m (GBP 448.8m), a fall of 14% from the USD 771m reported a year earlier. Revenue at the company, which owns Time magazine and the CNN and HBO television networks, fell by 7% to USD 6.9bn.

Six Months with a Hackintosh Netbook

David Adams 2009-04-29 Hardware 20 Comments

Over at Wired Gadget Lab, they're taking a look back at several people who've gone to a bunch of trouble to hack up and deal with the pitfalls of netbooks running OSX. As the story's title states, it ain't pretty. In a nutshell, they found that even if you load a nice OS onto a cheap, tiny computer, you still have to deal with the inherent downsides of a cheap, tiny computer, and when you run an Apple OS on a non-Apple machine, you'll have some software problems. I read this article with great interest, because a few months ago I bought an MSI Wind (the same netbook that this guy used) with thoughts of putting OSX on it. But this article set me to thinking about netbooks, the mythical Apple netbook, and Apple's Newton legacy.

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Released

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-29 Microsoft 7 Comments

Microsoft released the second service pack for Office 2007, with ODF and PDF support. "Now all Office users will have the option to load and save OpenDocument files, with today's distribution of Service Pack 2 of Office 2007. In something of a surprise -- contrary to what many at Microsoft led us to believe -- upon installing SP2 on our test systems, we immediately located an option for saving files in ODF by default. That means you don't have to "Save As" and export to ODF if you don't ever want to use Microsoft's OOXML or Office 2003 "compatibility mode;" you can at least try to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as substitutes for OpenOffice."

Symbian Fnd to Launch No-Charge App Store for Devs

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-29 Wireless 1 Comment

The Symbian Foundation is working to ensure that it provides the shortest path for mobile developers not only to develop applications, but to go from application development to making money on the applications they build. To that end, the foundation will launch an "application inventory" where developers will not be charged a fee or percentage to distribute their applications via the foundation's channel.

RISC OS 5 Pictured Running on ARM Cortex-A8 Kit

Submitted by poundsmack 2009-04-29 RISC OS 8 Comments

Drobe has scored evidence that Jeffrey Lee, with help from Uwe Kall and ROOL staff, have managed to port RISC OS 5 to the Beagleboard, a board with a 600Mhz Cortex A8 ARM processor and 256MB of RAM. Drobe has a photo of RISC OS 5 booting into a command prompt.

Windows Vista SP2, Server 2008 SP2 Reach RTM

Submitted by poundsmack 2009-04-29 Windows 2 Comments

According to NeoWin, the second service pack for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 has gone gold, or RTM in Microsoft Land. "Microsoft has finally finished and compiled the RTM version of Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008. The full version string being 6.0.6006.18005, which company officials have confirmed is the final RTM version of SP2."

Getting the Lead Out of Linux

Submitted by lemur2 2009-04-29 Linux 13 Comments

A number of significant opportunities for performance improvements seem to be just over the horizon for Linux systems. OSNews regular lemur2 submitted an overview of the most important potential performance improvements to us.

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